In beauty, brains and brawn, the three balloonists were perfectly cast for the adventure. Pamela Brown and Rod Anderson were a visionary American couple who conceived of and nurtured the daring flight. Malcolm Brighton, their pilot, was a blond Englishman with a pioneer dash and swagger. The flight of The Free Life would be his 100th assent.The late Anthony Smith asks why humans follow such improbable impulses. His own appetites for adventure - including a motorcycle trip through Africa and ballooning across the Alps - put him at the receiving end of innumerable mishaps.He weaves his thoughts about human endeavor around the doomed 1970 flight of The Free Life from East Hampton, New York - a symbol of the end of an era and of the human longing for the unknown.